My thanks to everyone for their thoughts.
For myself, I remain someone who believes that on the balance of probabilities gold will probably go up in the medium/long term. I have to admit though that my confidence has fallen from - to give an illustrative figure - maybe 70% to 55% today.
Goldfinger et al are quite correct in that the fundamentals*, on a historical basis, are very strong. But, as someone once said the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. I certainly don't think it's possible to trade in and out of this market regularly and expect anything but losses.
My worry is that despite the fundamentals, despite a new russian war... the reality is that since March the average price has dropped steadily. The five year chart looks ugly.
This recent drop from $950ish has been precipitous, I told myself I'd sell at a safe-ish $840 if it dropped that far, and today I duly did. This is by no means the end of my flirtation with Gold though I hope, I will buy back in at some stage as long as the price does not continue its current fall.
...I see the price as an elastic band, the markets/PPT/whatever you want to call the realities moving the price, can push and push the price down, but in the end if they slip for a second it just means that the harder they pushed on the way down the harder it will spring back into their faces on the way up... this spring back up could be the price rocket many have predicted...
It is of course also possible that the markets push the elastic band so hard it snaps.
*-Monetary inflation for 15 years
-HPC
-Stock market over-valuation
-Transfer of wealth from west to east and possibility/likelihood of financial paradigm shift occurring in the process
-Real interest rates negative
-Close to? at? peak oil
In the final analysis I may have less confidence in gold than I did a month ago, but where else is a better place for your cash right now?